Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe has accused journalists of behaving like politicians, claiming they are more interested in peddling propaganda than reporting on the governing ANC’s heroic efforts to keep the lights on.
Mantashe, speaking at the Electoral Commission’s results national operation centre in Midrand on Thursday, told Sunday World that contrary to the media-popularised narrative, diesel usage to produce power leading to elections has come at less than half the procurement during ex-Eskom chief Andre de Ruyter’s time.
However, according to Mantashe, the media was promoting a story that loadshedding would return shortly after the elections, as the ANC was eager to secure votes.
He lamented that the ANC went into the elections “swimming upstream” because journalists were too busy concocting conspiracy theories to notice the good work the ANC had done since July 2022 to stabilise the power grid.
The minister claimed that the ongoing supply of uninterrupted power over more than sixty days was due to coal power generators doing better, which, according to him, never happened under De Ruyter.
When asked if he meant that De Ruyter was purposefully working against the ANC’s political interests, Mantashe responded: “I don’t want to make that allegation. I was accused of making it. But I have been vindicated, actually, if you want to come to it.”
Mantashe went on to explain that energy minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa had focused on the energy availability factor, power station by power station, and that it was paying off.
“The country’s energy availability is at 70.78%, indicating that coal generators are doing better,” he said, flexing his factual muscles.
“Once you talk about the availability factor of electricity, you talk about the performance of the generators, not diesel,” he said.
But despite all this, Mantashe said, journalists have been planting seeds of doubt, claiming that loadshedding was orchestrated by the ANC government.
“It can’t be that loadshedding will come back after elections,” he scoffed. “I can tell you now that this is a plan that was in motion in July 2022 and is giving us results now.
“But journalists plant the seed that the end of loadshedding is about elections, and it will come back.”
He went on: “You don’t take into account the progress we’ve already made. We are over 60 days without loadshedding.”
Mantashe said that going to the elections, journalists behaved like politicians. “I have no complaints, but all I’m saying is that I expect better from journalists.
“I’m expecting journalists to do an objective analysis and that people make their choices.
But once journalists punt a particular line, they cease to be journalists and become political parties themselves,” he said.
Mantashe singled out Newsroom Afrika. “If you look yesterday (Wednesday) on Newsroom Afrika, they were punting a theme of voting for change… Even at interviews when they were at Wits, those who were in ANC colours were not interviewed.
They were interviewing people in a selective manner. They were encouraging people to vote for change. They are being unfair, and it’s not journalistic,” he said.
